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Ask HN: What tech has more demand on freelancing?
Hello all.
I've a mix profile: senior Data Scientist on my day job, self-tought web dev on my spare time.
Now, after many years being employed I'd love to start freelancing but I feel I need to specialize on something to become more sellable.
My skillset looks like this:
- Data analysis (high)
- Data visualization (high)
- Data engineering (mid)
- Machine learning (mid)
- Frontend (low)
- Backend (low)
I'm more experienced on the data part but also I believe it's more challenging to create a healthy client funnel.
Options I see:
A) Data Science track - discarded for freelancing
B) Data engineering track - get some certifications on Big Query or Looker to become an expert
C) Front-end - what has more demand as a freelance?
D) Back-end - what has more demand as a freelance?
I'm really open to learn anything until mastering, but I don't know what.
I'm currently valued at my day job and quiting to start as an entry-freelance on something that I'm not proficient (yet) scares me. But at the same time I'm not sure I'd enjoy a data analysis job as a freelance.
Another thing that scare me about the "web track" is the amount of different technologies out there. How can I compete agains other freelancers with a huge list of libraries and APIs? Is that critical to land a freelance job?
What would you do in my situation?
Where there is more demand?
- op03 5y agoYou should have begun the write up with WHY you'd "love to start freelancing". Depending on the reasons advice will be very different.
- Axvi 5y agoFair point :) Some reasons I don't like being an employee: - Schedule constrains - Politics and certain dynamics within/between teams. I'm getting tired of those. - Money. I'm close to the ceiling (for my location and role) unless I pivot into management - I'm a bit disconnected about what delivers real value within the company, I feel I'm just a small piece of a big machinery. It's a bit abstract the work I do - I can influence but I don't own my career path What I believe a freelance route could give me: - I can pivot until finding what I enjoy doing - More flexible schedule - Feeling that I'm providing tangible value - Money ceiling - My efforts would give me a sense of investing in "my own business" - Freedom. Choose who to work with or not (ideal scenario of course) - Learning new tech
- op03 5y agoYou need to stick those reasons somewhere you see them everyday cause they will be a much more useful compass than whats in demand. Whats in demand is always changing. The way it worked out for me was contacting someone senior at a startup incubator and telling them I wanted some kind of consulting role (few hours a week) to explore more flexible work. They are always hard up for experienced people. That put me in touch with a bunch of startups and I picked one where they had a small project but no one free to work on. That was the door opener and being in a setting with multiple companies all around, it was easy to make contacts, hear what issues different companies had etc. Whenever it aligned with something I knew or was interested in techwise I would try to get involved or help them out. If you are not a big networker like me the key is to put yourself in environments where you are constantly bumping into people who are telling you their problems :) Good luck!
- Axvi 5y agoThat's a great advice. Thanks a lot
- nceasy 5y agowhats your time zone? I also want to get some freelance jobs and i have a similar (1 year) experience in data engineering/analytics, customer support, bigquery, datastudio etc. would be nice to discuss, I'm willing to coop maybe gather efforts would be nice to leave my snobish douchey egocentric toxic boss